Walk your dog to the Ocean City Dog Playground on any evening this month and you'll hear it before you see it: the beep of heavy equipment backing up somewhere past the tennis court fence. Look north past the basketball court and the swing set, and there it is, the site everyone in Little Salisbury has been driving past for two decades wondering what would ever become of it. Something is finally happening at 94th Street. The interesting part isn't the construction itself. It's how much of the neighborhood sitting right next to it isn't part of the deal at all.
That distinction matters more than the headlines suggest, because the property line between Little Salisbury Park and the old Ocean Plaza Mall site is about to become one of the sharpest before-and-after edges in Ocean City.
What's Actually Going Up at 94th and Coastal Highway
The mall itself has a longer history than most people walking their dogs past it realize. Built in 1983, it lost its anchor tenants over the following two decades until the interior sections were demolished for safety reasons back in 2018, leaving little more than Roses Discount Store, an ACME, a restaurant, a coffee shop and a bank standing on an otherwise empty 17-acre lot. Roses hung on the longest, 40 years on that corner, before it closed for good in 2024 and was torn down.
Continental Realty Corporation, the Baltimore firm that has owned the property since 2004, is now rebuilding it as Bayside Shops at 94th. The plan calls for a new 48,000-square-foot ACME Markets on the site of the old Roses, plus roughly 11,000 square feet of additional in-line retail space, all targeted for completion in late 2026 or early 2027. The existing ACME stays open in its current spot through construction, so grocery runs won't be interrupted while the new building goes up around it.
Here's the number worth sitting with: the original enclosed mall ran nearly 140,000 square feet. The new grocery-anchored center coming out of this redevelopment totals under 60,000. That gap is the real story. Continental Realty isn't rebuilding a mall, it's building a much smaller retail footprint and handing the rest of the acreage to NVR Homes, which is constructing townhomes on two of the subdivided parcels adjacent to the new ACME. The site plan approved by the town's Planning Commission outlined as many as 114 units across those two parcels. Little Salisbury's mall lot is becoming a residential development with a grocery store attached, not the other way around.
What Changes, What Doesn't
For residents whose daily routine runs through the park, the corner store, or Blue Fish for dinner, the more useful way to read this project isn't the total square footage. It's which pieces of the property are actually changing hands and which ones are staying exactly where they are.
| Changing | Staying Put |
|---|---|
| Roses building replaced by new 48,000 sq ft ACME | Current ACME keeps operating through construction |
| ~11,000 sq ft of new in-line retail space | Blue Fish Restaurant & Bar, on the parcel that isn't being redeveloped |
| Up to 114 NVR Homes townhomes on two subdivided parcels | The bank building on that same untouched parcel |
| Target completion: late 2026 to early 2027 | Little Salisbury Park: tennis courts, basketball court, playground, dog run |
The parcel holding Blue Fish and the bank was explicitly carved out of the redevelopment plan, meaning the one sit-down restaurant on that corner isn't going anywhere while the rest of the property gets rebuilt around it. That's a small detail, but it's the one that tells you this project is additive to the neighborhood's retail options rather than a wholesale replacement of what's already there.
The Park's Unfinished Business
Little Salisbury Park has been quietly upgrading itself regardless of what happens next door. In 2024, the town replaced 20-year-old playground equipment with a new structure called the Aventus Tower, and the park's parent-child swing is, according to the town's own recreation guide, the only one of its kind in Ocean City. Between the two tennis courts, the basketball court, the dog playground and the Ocean City Center for the Arts building that houses the Art League of Ocean City, this is a genuinely well-used piece of public land for a residential pocket this size.
What hasn't moved forward is the conversation about expanding it. Back when the mall property was first subdivided in 2024, Ocean City's Parks and Recreation Director floated the idea of adding a dedicated pickleball court by redoing the basketball court, and the mayor raised the possibility of the town approaching the shopping center's owner about acquiring a slice of that land for the park. At the time, the city manager told council the town hadn't actually made that approach. The only outreach on record was to Verizon about its parking lot next door, and that was turned down flat.
Whether that conversation with Continental Realty ever restarted once construction actually began isn't something the public record shows yet. It's the one loose thread in this whole project worth watching if you're the kind of resident who'd rather have a second pickleball court than wonder about it. For now, the park's footprint is the same one it's always been.
The Rest of the Neighborhood Isn't Waiting on a Grocery Store
None of this touches the parts of Little Salisbury that don't sit along Coastal Highway. Head the other direction, toward 87th Street bayside, and you're at a small sandy launch point residents use for kayaks and sunset views over Assawoman Bay, plus a neighborhood-operated boat ramp for anyone getting a boat or jet ski into the water without leaving the neighborhood. None of that is affected by anything happening at 94th Street.
The commercial corner near Coastal Highway and 94th already has its own small lineup that construction crews haven't touched:
- Coffee Beanery, for the morning routine
- Liquid Assets, for wine and the occasional bottle run
- Layton's on 92nd, tucked just south of the construction zone
These aren't new additions tied to the redevelopment. They're what's already been sustaining daily life in Little Salisbury while the mall sat half empty for years, and they'll keep doing that job through 2026 and into 2027 whether the new ACME opens on schedule or not.
The honest way to think about this project, if you live here, is that Little Salisbury isn't getting a new identity. It's getting a smaller, more residential version of a property that's been an eyesore since most of today's residents moved in. The park stays the park. Blue Fish stays Blue Fish. The only real open question is whether the town ever picks up that pickleball conversation with the new owners next door, and that's a story that hasn't finished yet.
If you're weighing what any of this means for your own property, or you're simply curious what a home near Little Salisbury Park is worth these days, Timothy Dozier knows this stretch of Ocean City block by block and is always glad to talk through it.
